Expression Studio 4 launched, wants to kill ugly apps

Microsoft today announced the release to manufacturing of Expression Studio 4 …

Expression Studio 4, the latest version of Microsoft's design-oriented development tools, was released to manufacturing today. The software is available immediately to MSDN subscribers, with retail availability coming later.

The three main components of Expression Studio are Expression Blend, for producing XAML designs for use with both Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation applications; Expression Web, for creating webpages; and Expression Encoder, for encoding and streaming video.

The big upgrade in Expression Blend 4 is that it now supports .NET 4 and Silverlight 4 development, and interoperability with Visual Studio 2010. Microsoft's ambition with Expression Blend is to put an end to ugly applications, and make it easier for developers to produce great-looking software. Redmond says that there are broadly two kinds of developers: those who have dedicated designers (potentially producing mock-ups in Adobe Photoshop, working with customers to decide on the look and feel, and so on), and those without.

Existing features such as Photoshop importing and a common project file format used between both Expression Blend and Visual Studio, have enabled both of these workflows. New to v4 is SharePoint integration in the SketchFlow prototyping component. Prototypes can be published to SharePoint to enable better customer feedback during the design and development of applications.

Expression Blend is particularly important, as it's the primary design tool for Silverlight applications—and that includes Windows Phone 7 applications. The version shipping today doesn't include Windows Phone 7-specific parts, but they'll be coming soon, with betas available over the coming months and a Service Pack once Windows Phone 7 is final.

Expression Web's biggest new feature is an extension to its SuperPreview. SuperPreview allows side-by-side comparison between a range of browsers. It provides Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8 previews, as well as Firefox, if that is installed. Unfortunately, no Chrome, Opera, or Safari for Windows options appear to be available. With Expression Web 4, Microsoft is offering a service, currently in beta, to allow previewing in remote browsers. The only option presently is Safari 4 on Mac OS X, but this is expected to grow as the service matures. In addition to comparing to browsers, SuperPreview also allows comparing to Photoshop compositions.

SuperPreview includes a number of bells and whistles; synchronized scrolling, highlighting the currently selected HTML element in both preview windows, and an option to overlay on rending on top of the other, to compare positioning directly.

SuperPreview may have a rather silly name, but this is cool

Expression Encoder offers improved codec performance at low bitrates, better screen capturing, and DRM protection of live streaming video. Version four also includes a new H.264 encoder.

Three different packages will be available: Expression Studio 4 Ultimate, Expression Studio 4 Premium, and Expression Studio 4 Web Professional. Expression Blend will only be in the Premium and Ultimate versions, and features like the new H.264 encoder and SketchFlow prototyping are restricted to Ultimate.

The Ultimate and Web Professional versions will be available at retail, priced at $599 and $149, respectively, with Premium and MSDN-specific releases. MSDN Ultimate subscribers will receive Ultimate; the rest will get Premium. Microsoft says that an upgrade will also be available to allow MSDN users to get the full functionality without needing to buy an Ultimate-level subscription. Existing users of version 3 will be able to upgrade to the corresponding version 4 product for free.

33 Reader Comments

So basically this is Microsoft moving in Adobe's content tool creation turf and Silverlight + Expression Studio 4 = Flash + CS5. I think its in Adobe's best interest to capture the HTML5 market so they have a backup market if Silverlight and/or HTML5 kill off flash.

after reading the article i was wondering about expression design, since it is not at all mentioned in the article. but it is listed as a component for all available editions of expression studio on ms' website.did you intentionally leave it out or don't you like the software or what's going on? i am a little confused...i have tried version 3 and i liked it as a quick and different alternative to illustrator, even though i don't use it for production purposes.

And take a look at the new VS 2010. The UI elements in it are considerably darker than the previous versions. I think they've been heading more towards the Expression ui for their development tools for a while now.

I find it difficult to put trust in a tool for producing beautiful UIs when it has failed to grasp that simple principle.

By all means let people break the rules -- sometimes it does make sense and sometimes a standard UI simply won't work -- but don't make it the default. If I wanted my desktop to look like that, I'd install a theme that did so (if Microsoft actually let me install custom themes, heh).

It's not just the non-standard colours. The scrollbars, tabs, drop-downs and font rendering are all fugly. It makes Valve's Steam app (another flat-black non-standard UI that visits desktops like an alien from another galaxy) look good, and Steam's UI is like something that came out of a dog's arse. (Though, to be fair, at least the button labels are centred in Expression, unlike Steam.

Then they should be able to configure their whole desktops and all of their apps (i.e. the OS theme/visual styles) to look like that, while people who have other tastes should be able to have all their apps looking how they want, and consistent with each other, as well

after reading the article i was wondering about expression design, since it is not at all mentioned in the article. but it is listed as a component for all available editions of expression studio on ms' website.did you intentionally leave it out or don't you like the software or what's going on? i am a little confused...i have tried version 3 and i liked it as a quick and different alternative to illustrator, even though i don't use it for production purposes.

It's still there, but it's barely updated. They seem to have slightly rejigged WMF exporting or something, but AFAICT it has zero new features.

I've always preferred the dark UI for my work. It's easier on the eyes, focuses you on your work, and in the days of CRTs in particular it didn't give the light bloom on colors. When I do video editing it is nice because I often work in a dimly lit room and having just the video elements as the focus it is easier to work.

It's kind of a preferential thing but you will find most high end production and design tools (drafting, layout, editing, color correction, drawing, etc.) will offer you a dark theme if it isn't already the default.

Ugh, I screwed that up while editing; the new stuff is the web service portion. I think the Photoshop stuff might be changed too (there's a new icon for it instead of just being under "Open Image"), but since I don't have Photoshop files to test the fidelity, I don't know for sure.

(Written on a "Gothic Apple" Ubuntu 10.04 actually, for the purposes of disclosure. I don't really care for Microsoft, but I'll call interface idiocy when I see it.)

Windows has no HIG - in the Windows world it is about hiffing shit against the wall and hoping things will stick. Mention HIG to a third party Windows programmer and they'll go "wow dude, like, thats so totally uncool, like, I want to have skinning, and millions of buttons and really customisable" - hence the reason why almost every Windows applications looks like shit. There are fuckwitts on this very website who seem to relish the very idea of shipping shit out to customers with no time spent on developing a consistent user interface.

People wonder why I am a Mac user; its shitty Windows programmers that make me a Mac user.

(Written on a "Gothic Apple" Ubuntu 10.04 actually, for the purposes of disclosure. I don't really care for Microsoft, but I'll call interface idiocy when I see it.)

Windows has no HIG - in the Windows world it is about hiffing shit against the wall and hoping things will stick. Mention HIG to a third party Windows programmer and they'll go "wow dude, like, thats so totally uncool, like, I want to have skinning, and millions of buttons and really customisable" - hence the reason why almost every Windows applications looks like shit. There are fuckwitts on this very website who seem to relish the very idea of shipping shit out to customers with no time spent on developing a consistent user interface.

Works for apple, look at itunes and quicktime, they arent consistant with the UI guidelines of ANY platform.

rawr_boy81 wrote:

Windows has no HIG - in the Windows world it is about hiffing shit against the wall and hoping things will stick. Mention HIG to a third party Windows programmer and they'll go "wow dude, like, thats so totally uncool, like, I want to have skinning, and millions of buttons and really customisable" - hence the reason why almost every Windows applications looks like shit. There are fuckwitts on this very website who seem to relish the very idea of shipping shit out to customers with no time spent on developing a consistent user interface.

Works for apple, look at itunes and quicktime, they arent consistant with the UI guidelines of ANY platform.

What ?iTunes and Quicktime are absolutely awful pieces of software on Windows - precisely because they aren't consistent with the system UI,They most certainly don't "work" !

I'm with xwred1 - applications using their own custom GUIs isn't a good thing. The only one I can think of that manages to do a good job, is Office's Ribbon - and even that is hated by some folk...

i personally think the unholy trilogy of shite objectionable-c is safari/quicktime/itunes, but somehow the latter two get more coverage then the next few of their competitors combined, does that mean they are 'good'?

i personally think the unholy trilogy of shite objectionable-c is safari/quicktime/itunes, but somehow the latter two get more coverage then the next few of their competitors combined, does that mean they are 'good'?

The user interface in Expression studio is exactly what it needs to be. The whole point of a dark UI is to focus the content and make it pop. Not to mention every developer tool out there that focuses on presentation has the same style. Also with Expression studio, there are a bunch of things that "glow" and color contrasts that work best against darker backgrounds. A key example is the project mapping in sketchflow.

The thing I find piss poor though is the huge increase in cost, but I will have to see what the upgrade pricing is. The main catch is they got rid of the Expression studio subscription option, instead it's now part of the msdn subscriptions, which trust me makes sense, never really understood why it was different. The problem I have is pushing the different features / functions of this package across the msdn versions. I say that cause its a huge price difference. The thing that was nice with Expression studio subscription was it included visual studio as well, which makes perfectly good sense, you kinda need studio to effectively use blend. I now have to go way up to a very expensive msdn package to get what I need. But.... they did say there is an upgrade option to get features I want, without the msdn, but I still have to get msdn cause of visual studio now.

overall though expression studio is wonderful for building web site and applications. Design is strong enough to get the job done. NOTE no where near Photoshop level but good enough for 95% of what you need to do. The video encoder is a bit clunky but does a great job and is key to building IIS smooth streaming feeds. Expression web smokes most to all other web site tools. A bit trickier to learn but learn it and man its nice. Blend just does so much of the work for you in a Silverlight application that it should be a sin. Can build whole 3d games with just Blend, and nice ones at that.

Overall though its more Silverlight 4 aims to kill ugly apps, and blend is how you do it. Should be the title. Cause really its silverlights layout system that does the work.